Customer

A group of technology and software engineering companies providing platforms for social discovery, personal development, and online entertainment.

Problem

The client was looking for a mature development service provider with profound game design and development skills. Softeq demonstrated solid subject-matter expertise in the target area, which is a core competence of the company pursued through its mobile game development studio zGames. To test the waters of working with the company, the customer tasked Softeq’s team with GDD development expecting the delivery within incredibly tight timelines. Impressed with the fast turnaround, the client further engaged the team in the art design and game development.

The team was to develop and graphically design a Unity-driven client-server dating app that employs gamification to attract more service subscribers, while tapping analytics for optimizing user engagement and retention.

Solution

The application was expected to withstand as high load conditions as 10,000 PCU (peak concurrent users). Softeq provided professional recommendations on building a reliable server-side infrastructure, while delivering a readable, maintainable code for the app.

The Client side of the application has the following features:

Match 3 game playing: to be able to chat with a selected partner, the player must first have a match 3 game session together

Taking photos and resizing them for the app

Viewing opponent player details

Inviting Facebook friends to sign up for the service

Viewing and comparing player related analytics using several sources (customer personnel access)

The app is integrated with Leanplum, an optimization solution for mobile apps. It will enable the customer personnel to create, automate, and test targeted mobile in-app messages and push notifications to optimize user engagement, retention, and brand loyalty.

The Server side of the application executes the following functionality:

Сore game mechanics

In-app purchase validation

Player photo storage

Subscriber base management

Analytics modules with over 60 events logged

The solution utilizes Google’s advanced data interchange format — the protocol buffers. They provide a way of encoding structured data in an efficient yet extensible format making it smaller, faster, and simpler, thus facilitating client-server communication.

Methodology

Softeq’s team utilized Scrum for internal work progress control. The team also met the customer’s request in observing the PMI standards employed for estimating the project completion date. MS Project was utilized as the project management tool.

Results

Softeq delivered the project completely in line with the GDD demonstrating excellent technical and project management capabilities that enabled the team to deliver quality work under significant time pressure.